books v. movies

I love movies; possibly way too much. I love to curl up at the end of the day and pop in a dvd. I love a good adventure and a little true love (The Princess Bride version, not the Made of Honor version). But as one who is far too critical of movies to really like very many of them, I am beginning to realize that they simply don't satisfy me like books do. Many movies, especially those based on books, try to do what books do, but almost never succeed. The way I see it, the magic of books is lost in cinema.

Like I said, I love movies. But they just don't thrill me like books do. The can't string me along for days or weeks, as I slowly learn about the characters, why they act the way they do, and what they think and feel. I become far more attached to books because of the amount of time I spend reading and allowing the story to develop. I become empathetic with the characters. I really want things to turn out well for them. If things don't turn out well for the characters in movies, I'm usually a little disappointed, but then, who really cares? It was only an hour and a half out of my life. Besides, I never expect for anything bad to happen to the good guys at the end; when does that ever happen in a movie? Hm, actually that might be nice for a change...

This is what I think about the Harry Potter movies: never should have happened. The first one was okay, and it even inspired me to read the books. But the rest of them only preserved the details that were necessary to the minor plot of the individual book at the expense of the details that were necessary to the plot of the entire series. This leaves people who have only seen the movies asking questions like, "What the heck?" This disappoints me greatly. The Harry Potter series was one of the best series I have read ever, and I am saddened by what has become of it, especially for those who prefer watching all the movies to reading any of the books.

This leads me to a sad fact of life. Students these days hardly have time to read for pleasure. My pleasure reading greatly decreased about the time I started cross country. Before that I would be reading two or three books at a time, including the ones I was reading for school. But now I am busy reading political science and Spanish books, and I hardly have the time for my own reading. I have recently been reduced to reading my current book, Men at Arms by Terry Pratchett, in my extremely boring chemistry class. Of course, I like to watch a lot of TV. I don't think that's the same as movies. But I could go on for a while about that.
Oh well, I'm done with my ranting for now. Buenas noches.